wouldn’t have lived long if I had. That’s when I came up with my plan.’ His chuckle was bitter and almost choked him. He took another mouthful of wine. ‘It was foolproof, I figured. I was going to disappear. Me and the plane together. Somewhere out over the sea. If they thought I was dead they couldn’t touch me.’
He refilled his glass, leaning forward on the table and cradling it in his palms. Fin could see the glassy quality of his eyes in the reflected candlelight.
‘I never filed a flight plan on those flights up to Solas, so there would be no questions. And obviously I fuelled up enough to get me there and back. But on the night I planned to disappear I filed a flight plan out to Mull, the landing strip at Glenforsa. A short flight, there and back, so when I went missing they would be looking in the wrong place. I took on enough fuel to get me up to the Outer Hebrides, but not back. It was going to be a one-way trip.’ He smiled sadly. ‘To eternity.’
He took several mouthfuls of wine, staring reflectively off into the darkness, revisiting painful memories in his mind.
‘I hugged the mountains on the flight up the west coast, to disrupt primary radar systems. Didn’t want anyone watching me. I ignored repeated queries from air traffic control, then dropped off secondary radar by switching off my transponder and telling ATC it had failed. Radio silence then. Of course, as far as Jimbo knew it was just another pickup and we landed at Solas as usual.
‘There was never anyone there to meet us. Just a set place to pick up the packages. There are no houses overlooking the beach, and the village of Solas is way the other side of the dunes. My plan was to wait at the plane while Jimbo went to pick up the goods and then just fly away without him.’
He breathed through his teeth in remembered frustration and shook his head.
‘But I guess I must have been giving off vibes. I was nervous as hell, and that must have transmitted itself to him. He insisted that I come with him. What could I do? I couldn’t refuse, so we left the engine running and hurried across the sand to where the stuff was hidden among the long grass. I was in turmoil, Fin. It was all set up. If I didn’t do it now I figured I never would. I was carrying one of the bags. And there was a fair bit of weight in it. A few kilos anyway. I don’t know what it was. Probably dope. Anyway, I hit him with it, from behind, swinging the bag at his head as hard as I could. He went down like a sack of potatoes, and I ran like hell for the plane.
‘I thought I was home free. But just as I’m reaching the plane I hear him breathing like a bloody steam train right behind me. I tried to get up on the wing, but he pulled me back down. Must have had the constitution of a fucking ox. He had blood running down his neck, and a look on his face like he wanted to kill me.’
Roddy stared off into an abyss that spanned seventeen years, breathing hard, just as if he were still there.
‘I knew I had to put him down, or I was fucked. But he was a strong bastard. He tried to hit me, and I hit him back, and then pushed him hard. He staggered backwards.’ Roddy closed his eyes. ‘Right into the fucking revolving propeller. Smashed in half his head and dropped him with a single blow.’
Fin knew now how the body in the plane had received its dreadful cranial injuries. He could only imagine what a bloody mess it must have been at the time.
‘He was dead, Fin. Fucking dead. His brains all over the fucking beach. At first I had no idea what to do. My immediate instinct was to get on the plane and just go. But then I knew I couldn’t leave him there. His family would think I’d killed him, and there’s no way they’d believe I just went missing after it. No one would believe that.’ He breathed out deeply, and Fin heard the tremble in his breath. ‘So then I started to think more clearly. I got him into my jacket with my wallet and stuff inside, in case anyone ever found it. Then I got him into the cockpit.’ He ran a hand over his face in recollection of the horror of it. ‘You have no idea how hard that was, Fin. He was a dead weight. Literally. Blood everywhere. It was about twenty minutes before I got him into the passenger seat and was able to shut the cockpit door and take off again.’
He seemed suddenly to become aware of the two faces watching him in absorbed fascination as he recounted the events of that night. Mairead must have heard it all before. Perhaps many times. But she was as transfixed as Fin by the retelling of it under the stars on this hot Spanish evening. Roddy picked up the bottle and refilled all their glasses. He took out another cigar and lit it.
‘I took the drugs with me and dropped them out of the plane once we were over the ocean. The incoming tide, I knew, would erase any evidence of Jimbo’s death. Then I set a course, as I’d always planned, for the mountains of southwest Lewis.
‘It was the end of July. Official sunset was about 10 p.m. It was much later than that, but still light, and I knew exactly where I was going. Mealaisbhal was my marker as I flew low into the mountains. I’d already picked out a loch just to the north of it. Hidden away in a valley, miles from any habitation. So I knew nobody would see or hear me at that time of night. I just cruised right in, low and flat, wheels retracted, and landed her on her belly on the water. A scary moment. But to be honest, Fin, I was beyond scared at that point, and there was no turning back. I’d burned off virtually all my fuel, which was always the plan. Didn’t want tell-tale oil slicks on the surface of the loch.’
He sucked on his cigar, and through his smoke told them how he had climbed out of the cockpit and hauled Jimbo’s body across into the pilot’s seat and strapped him in.
‘The plane was floating, and would probably have taken a long time to go down. Too long for my purposes. But the good thing about the Comanche is that it takes on fuel from inlets on both wings, either side of the cockpit, and the wings were already just under water. So I climbed down on to the wings and opened them up. The tanks filled with water and down she went.’
Fin said, ‘That water must have been freezing, even in July.’
‘It was bloody cold, Fin. I can tell you that. But it was a good thing I was in it long enough to wash off Jimbo’s blood. Because there was someone waiting for me on the shore with dry clothes, and I didn’t want him to see blood, or know anything about the body in the plane.’
‘Whistler,’ Fin said.
Roddy nodded self-consciously. ‘I couldn’t have done it on my own. I needed clothes, transport out of the mountains. Whistler was the only one I trusted. I’d told him everything.’
‘Not everything, Roddy. You didn’t tell him about Jimbo. And that made him an accessory to murder, even if he didn’t know it.’
‘I didn’t murder Jimbo!’ Roddy raised his voice in protest. ‘It was an accident.’
‘I think you might have had difficulty convincing a jury of that.’
Roddy glared at him for a moment, then resigned himself to the interpretation that no doubt everyone would have made. His voice dropped again. ‘It was an accident.’
‘So Whistler met you on the shore,’ Fin prompted.
‘Yes. He was waiting for me as promised. I stripped off my wet clothes and we buried them in the peat. I got dressed, and we made our way down the valley in the moonlight to the track where Whistler had a four-by-four waiting for us. We drove to Harris then, and I got on the ferry from Tarbert to Skye first thing next morning. All togged up like a hiker. A woolly hat and my hood up so no one would recognize me.’
Mairead spoke for the first time, unexpectedly, and her voice almost startled them in the dark. ‘I met him off the ferry in Skye. I’d driven up there the night before, right after I left you at the Cul de Sac.’
‘I told her everything,’ Roddy said. ‘About Jimbo, I mean. And we flew together down here to Spain, to look for a place. Somewhere I could still be a part of the band, at least as far as writing and recording were concerned, but dead to the rest of the world. Lost with my plane somewhere in the sea among the Inner Hebrides.’
Fin said, ‘So obviously the rest of the band knew the full story.’
‘Oh, not about Jimbo,’ Roddy said. ‘We never told anyone about that.’
Fin looked at Mairead. ‘Must have made it awkward for you with the others when Jimbo’s body turned up in the plane.’
She lowered her eyes. ‘We’re still dealing with that.’
Roddy fixed Fin with a very direct look, an appeal in his gaze. ‘If it were ever to come out, Fin — you know, that I was alive. There are still people out there who would come looking for me.’
Fin sat staring into his wine for a long time before taking a small mouthful. ‘If I say nothing, knowing what I know now, that would make me an accessory after the fact to murder and fraud.’
‘I told you we shouldn’t have told him,’ Mairead said. Her voice was hard and edged by tension.
But Roddy’s eyes never left Fin’s. ‘He’s not going to tell anyone, are you Fin? I mean, who would benefit from it? None of us, that’s for sure. There’s nothing to be served by it. All it would do is put lives at risk.’
